


In the Shadow of Mt. Metagalapa

by Tikor



Category: Exalted
Genre: Fanfiction, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-22 22:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8303317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tikor/pseuds/Tikor
Summary: Guest rights are explained at the inn.





	

Now see here, if you look up and there's a bird that's too big to be right, you get down in this basement and shut the door and bar it. Don't wait on anybody, there's plenty of entrances. Every once in a while the hawkmen and hawkriders raid these parts, and the best thing you can do is just wait it out. I'm telling you this because you're not from around here, so you'd have no way of knowing.

Why not fight em? You ever heard of the Lanksheemen? Or the city of Lankshee? No! Of course you haven't! They thought they could ride to the defense of their villages, on account of having that shiny city of theirs. It's just a ruin now. Yeah, they bowed down a few of them, but the hawkriders, you can't win against 'em. They got smart and started keeping track of where the men with horses and bows were stationed. Turns out when you can fly it's pretty easy to avoid the enemy troops. Pretty soon the whole country was on fire and those proud horsemen were starving for lack of supply. Everybody either starved, burned, or moved on. My aunt by my mother's brother married in from Lankshee, but her kids are all right-speaking Kentsmen now. We Kents know how to deal with the hawkriders. Just burrow down and wait 'em out. 

See, there's plenty of good land around here. Enough to grow much more than a family needs to make it through the winter and spring, even on a bad harvest. The hawkriders, they have to fly off with whatever they take, and that ain't much. Too heavy, y'see? When you don't put up a fight, they don't set fire to anything at all. They just take what they want, and fly right off again. Yes, yes, if you get caught out in the country they might take you - so you gotta have your bolt-holes in mind. This one here is yours by guest-right, already worked into the price of your beds. 

What do they do with the people they take? Hell if I know! They might fly them off to heaven, or keep them as slaves, or just toss em from a height to see what kind of bits they break into when they hit the sea. Have a right laugh at anybody who tells you anything more certain. Everybody knows someone who's been taken, usually children with too few wits and too small of legs to find a place to go quick enough. They're lighter, too. But nobody knows where they go, cause nobody makes it back.


End file.
